U.S. Pat. No. 5,657,377 ('377 Patent) titled PORTABLE TELEPHONE USER PROFILES, which is assigned to Mitel Networks Corporation, Canada, describes how a user can register for feature services on a central switch from devices located anywhere in the network including that switch. As taught, when a user signals the central switch from a device on that switch, or from a device on another switch, features can be assigned to them on calls to and from that device. This is commonly termed “hot desking” and allows features to be assigned to a user rather than a specific device. With this, users can roam from device to device and receive the features that they require.
Hot desking can provide a user with their enterprise features from devices that are connected anywhere in the public switched telephone network. This can provide a form of registration which allows the system to route incoming calls to a roaming user. It can also allow the user to declare the device at which they can be found and allow the system to supply the user with their preferred features at that device.
The '377 Patent was developed to provide services to a single device. Today, however, users are often associated with multiple devices. For example, a user can have a cell phone, a residence telephone, an office telephone, etc. The provision of multiple devices extends the scenario in which the '377 Patent can be used, which as disclosed within the present application can maintain multiple devices that are permanently associated with the user but can shift registrations for the central switch (PBX) features among them. A user can at one time wish to receive their PBX calls on their cell phone and at another time have them routed to their residence telephone. This can provide the opportunity for extending the functionality of the '377 technology to provide more benefits to the user.